By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Robotics & Machine Learning Daily News Daily News-A robot, designed to mimic the motion of a snail, has been developed by researchers at the University of Bristol. Adding to the increasing innovative new ways robots can navigate, the team, base d at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, fitted the robot with a sliding suction me chanism enabling the device to slide on water, a substitute of a snail's mucus w hich also acts as an adhesive. The study, which was published in the journal of Nature Communications, shows a novel way for robots to scale walls easily, potentially changing how difficult-t o-access surfaces such as blades of wind turbines, hulls of ships, aircrafts and glass windows of skyscrapers are autonomously inspected. These features also en dow sliding suction with great potential for future applications in robotic fiel ds, including industrial gripping, climbing, outdoor and transportation. Snails can stably slide across a surface with only a single high-payload sucker, offering an efficient adhesive locomotion mechanism for next-generation climbin g robots. The critical factor for snails' sliding suction behaviour is mucus sec retion, which reduces friction and enhances suction.
Emerging TechnologiesMachine LearningNano-robotRobotRoboticsUniversity of Bristol
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